‘It won’t just wipe out the Legacy’s gold,’ Spencer sneered. ‘It’ll wipe out the Legacy. Everything you’ve built, everything you’ve done over a hundred and fifty years? Gone.’
‘There’ll be nothing left for you either,’ said Eddie.
The young man shrugged. ‘Augustine’s taking care of my money issues whatever happens. I won’t be broke any time soon, trust me. Unlike the rest of the Legacy.’ He smirked at his father and stepmother. ‘I just hope I get to see Fenrir and Olivia’s faces if it happens. It’ll be worth it just to see that arrogant sociopath and that old bag squirm.’
‘Hey!’ snapped Nina. ‘That’s my grandmother you’re talking about.’
‘The grandmother who only told you she was still alive because she realised she could get you to find the Midas Cave? Yeah, she’s worth standing up for. Just like the rest of them.’ Spencer gave his father a look of disdain. ‘All that crap you fed me about using the Legacy’s money to do good for society? What a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. We all know it’s just to cover up how our families got rich in the first place.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Lonmore, but with an uncomfortable defensiveness.
‘No? And what about you, Dr Wilde? You want to join the Midas Legacy even after finding out the truth about it? You’re as bad as the others.’
‘I don’t want to join the Legacy,’ Nina shot back. Spencer’s surprise at learning that was plain. ‘And what truth? What are you talking about?’
Spencer gave his father a mocking laugh. ‘You haven’t told her? Oh my God! Olivia never even . . . Damn.’ He shook his head, laughing again. ‘I never thought even she’d be that stone cold.’
‘About what?’ Nina demanded.
Trakas smiled. ‘Perhaps you should tell her the family secret, Spencer.’
‘Spencer, no,’ said Lonmore in a warning tone.
His son ignored him, turning to Nina with a smug expression. ‘You know why Aldus Lonmore and the others were actually in Nepal? They sure as hell weren’t explorers.’
‘So enlighten me,’ she said, frowning – but also wanting to find out more.
‘I thought you’d know, but I guess you’re an archaeologist rather than a historian.’ A smirk at his little joke. ‘Nepal was falling apart in the 1840s, with power struggles between the royal family and other nobles. It got so bad that when someone murdered the queen’s favourite general, she had everyone she thought might have been even slightly involved rounded up, brought to her palace and executed on the spot. So it wasn’t exactly the most stable country. But you know what kind of people you’ll always find looking to make a fast buck in that kind of situation?’
‘Mop salesmen?’ Eddie suggested.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Spencer said, ignoring the interruption. ‘Arms dealers!’
The intruders spread out silently through the yacht, hunting down the crew.
One man was caught as he cleaned Trakas’s stateroom, turning at a noise over the whine of his vacuum and taking a taser dart to his chest. Another man emerged from the head to find a wetsuited stranger just feet away, not even having time to shout in alarm before one shock was overpowered by another.
The other crewmen were also quickly taken down. Out on the open sea, they had thought they were safe, and paid the price for their complacency. One by one they fell, whether to the paralysing power of a stun gun or more physical blows.
The last to be taken was Captain Rouphos in the wheelhouse; focused on guiding the Pactolus through the choppy waters, he didn’t register someone entering behind him until thousands of volts sent him sprawling over the controls. His attacker, the woman, secured the sailor’s hands behind his back, then brought him at gunpoint down to the lower deck.
A burning smell made her nose twitch, her concern rising as she realised a thin haze of smoke was coming from the galley. She peered in to discover that the cause was a large fish on a grill. One side was black, the flesh turned to charcoal.
She almost walked on, but then it occurred to her that the smoke could trip a fire alarm, warning Trakas that something was wrong. Keeping her gun fixed on her prisoner, she turned off the grill’s twin propane burners. ‘Okay, keep going.’
Rouphos trudged aft down the central passage. The other bound crew were crammed together in a storage hold under armed guard. The leader of the attackers shoved the captain down with his men, then spoke into his headset. ‘Is Trakas still in the same room?’ The reply was in the affirmative. ‘Okay. Let’s go. Honnick, stay here and watch them.’ A man with a cut and bruise on his forehead took up position at the door. Everyone else headed for the main deck.
The woman glanced into the galley again. The burnt fish was still smouldering, but the smoke was being drawn out through an extractor fan. Since the alarm hadn’t already gone off, it was unlikely anything would trigger it now. Reassured, she trailed the leader to the stairs, the other men behind her.
The only movement in the galley was the gentle swirl of smoke rising from the half-incinerated swordfish . . . then a cabinet door slid open.
The chef, a Greek woman called Sperou, leaned out, listening. All she heard was the clump of retreating feet. She carefully slid out of the cabinet.
It was sheer fluke that she had escaped capture. She had been about to turn the fish when she glanced to check a simmering pan and caught a reflection in its gleaming stainless-steel side. Even distorted by the curved surface, she instantly recognised that the figure in the passageway was not one of the crew . . . and was holding a gun.
By the time he entered the galley, Sperou had already found a hiding place. Assuming that one of his companions had already captured the cook, the intruder gave the room a cursory search, then departed.
Now Sperou blew a relieved kiss at the pan before going to a wall cabinet. Assorted packaged ingredients were within, but she pushed them aside and retrieved a box, opening it to reveal a compact Glock 26 handgun and magazine.
It took only a moment for the woman to load and check the pistol, her six years in the Greek army and specialist bodyguard training beyond that familiarising her with a multitude of weapons. What had happened to the yacht’s crew she didn’t know, but she assumed from the number of people passing the galley that they were being held prisoner in one of the holds.
She had to free them.
‘That’s right,’ Spencer went on, seeing Nina’s dismay. ‘Our ancestors, the founders of the Midas Legacy, weren’t in Nepal to make any amazing discoveries. They were gun-runners! They were selling rifles – to both sides.’
‘And that’s how they got their gold?’ she asked.
Spencer nodded. ‘The monks at Dragon Mountain were allied with . . . I don’t even know who, but it doesn’t matter. All that Buddhist peace and love crap didn’t get a look-in when they had a chance to arm up their side. And they were so happy to get the guns that as well as paying their suppliers a fortune in gold, they also showed them their biggest secret – the Midas Cave. And our three families have been living off the back of that ever since. Just with the embarrassing part about how they actually got rich in the first place pushed aside.’
Nina looked at Lonmore for a denial, but could tell that one would not be coming. ‘And I don’t suppose you or Olivia or anyone else would have mentioned this if I had decided to join the Legacy?’ she asked him.
‘It’s not something we’re proud of,’ said Lonmore. ‘But it happened, and since then the three families have tried to do what they can to make up for it.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure you’ve been making regular donations to charities in Nepal,’ Eddie said scathingly.
‘But now you know,’ Lonmore continued. ‘So what are you going to do, Nina?’
Nina drew in a breath, trying to control her anger. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do,’ she said. ‘And that??
?s have anything more to do with your pathetic little secret society. And believe me, the next time I see my grandmother – if she’s ever brave enough to show her face to me again – I’m going to tell her exactly what I think of her for using me to do her dirty work! Right now, though? I came here for a reason. Which was,’ she turned back to Trakas, ‘to ask you to turn over the Crucibles to the IHA.’
‘I think you know my answer, Dr Wilde,’ Trakas replied, his earlier good humour evaporating.
‘Yeah, I think I do,’ she said, the unpleasantly familiar feeling that the situation was about to change for the worse rising in her stomach.
Eddie sized up Axelos, whom he realised was doing the same to him. ‘So do I.’
‘Augustine, there’s no need to do this,’ said Lonmore, pleading. ‘We can come to a deal. The Legacy is willing to cut you in on an equal share of the gold we make if you let us have both Crucibles. Everyone can benefit. Even you, Spencer,’ he added. His son’s only response was another scornful sneer.
‘Do you have your own particle accelerator?’ scoffed Trakas. ‘I think not. And why do you keep saying I have both Crucibles? I only have the big one.’
‘No, you took the small one too,’ said Nina.
He looked puzzled. ‘I did not.’
‘Yes you did! You sent your men to take it from us in Iceland.’
Trakas asked Axelos a question in Greek. The younger man shook his head, just as surprised as his boss. ‘I only have one,’ the tycoon reiterated. ‘I wanted both, but I do not need the small one. I do not know where it is; Petros thought you lost it on the mountain.’
‘No, we brought it back . . .’ Nina trailed off, suspicion rising. She glared at Lonmore, but he was equally bewildered. ‘If you don’t have it, then who—’
A sudden scuffle of running footsteps from behind Axelos made the Greek whirl – to find a silenced handgun aimed at his chest. ‘Nobody move!’ yelled the wetsuited man holding it.
This time, Nina and Eddie knew the face. ‘Rutger?’ cried the surprised Lonmore as De Klerx barged into the room, shoving Axelos backwards. The bodyguard recovered, about to lunge at his attacker – only to topple and crash to the floor as a taser barb fired by a second diver behind the Dutchman stabbed into his torso. At the same moment, two more figures ran along the side deck outside the lounge’s windows and rushed in through the foredeck entrance.
One of them was Anastasia Fenrirsdottir.
‘Hello, Augustine,’ she said, pointing a gun at Trakas. ‘I believe you have something that belongs to us.’
24
Sperou moved cautiously to the galley door and checked the passageway outside. Empty. The group who had just passed had come from aft. She leaned out to look in that direction. One of the doors was open, a shadow warning her that someone was standing just inside it.
The Glock raised, she padded quietly down the passage. The shadow’s source gradually came into view as she neared the hold. A man, wearing a wetsuit; and beyond him she glimpsed the ship’s crew sitting on the floor, heads down.
She could simply sneak up to the guard and shoot him, but the gunshot would alert the other hijackers. Instead, she carefully judged his height. She would only get one chance . . .
Sperou crept up to the doorway, readied herself – then whipped around it and smashed the base of the Glock’s grip against the guard’s temple. Caught completely unawares, Honnick reeled in blinding pain, crashing against a bank of shelves. She drove home a second brutal blow. This time the guard went down and stayed there.
The prisoners looked up at her, surprised and relieved. ‘Is everyone all right?’ she whispered.
Rouphos tried to stand; she helped him up. ‘Yes. They had guns, but they used tasers on us first.’ He turned to show her the plastic band trapping his wrists. ‘Get this off me!’
‘Hold on,’ Sperou replied. There was nothing in the room that could cut the zip-tie, so she hurried back to the galley, quickly returning with a pair of meat shears. A single snip, and the restraint fell off.
Rouphos took Honnick’s gun, then helped the other crewmen up, the chef cutting each free in turn. ‘There are guns hidden in the other hold,’ said the captain. He nodded at the two nearest men. ‘Come with me to get them. Everyone else go with Sperou to the weapons locker. Once we’re all armed, I’ll go up to the bridge and retake the controls. The rest of you find Mr Trakas and either get him off the ship – or kill those pirate bastards!’
‘What about the people who came to see Mr Trakas?’ a man asked as the group began to exit.
‘If they’re working with the hijackers,’ replied Rouphos grimly, ‘kill them too.’
‘Ana!’ shouted Lonmore, jumping to his feet. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘Has he given up the Crucible?’ Anastasia replied, indicating Trakas.
‘No, but—’
‘Then we’re doing what should have been done from the start.’ The blonde turned her gaze to the younger Lonmore. ‘And you – you’re working with Trakas? I should have known you’d sell out the Legacy to get revenge. You bitter, greedy little boy.’
‘Hey, fuck you, Ana!’ Spencer snapped back, only to flinch away as the scowling De Klerx pointed his gun at him.
Trakas regained his composure. ‘You think the Crucible is here? I will have to disappoint you, Anastasia.’
‘Then where is it?’ she demanded.
‘At one of my facilities.’
‘Which one?’
The Greek shrugged. ‘If you kill me, you will never find it.’
‘But you’ll be dead,’ said De Klerx. ‘Gold is no use to you then.’
‘Oi!’ Eddie said loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘You’re all pretty wound up about this, but you know what? It’s not our problem. We’ll just be on our way and leave you lot to it, if you don’t mind. Come on, love.’
He stood, about to lead Nina to an exit – but Anastasia flicked her gun in their direction. The weapon did not remain aimed directly at the couple, but the threat was clear. ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘Nina, I’m not going to let Trakas keep the Crucible, but giving it to the IHA is not acceptable either.’
‘Point that fucking thing somewhere else,’ Eddie warned her. ‘Or you’ll regret it.’
De Klerx turned away from Spencer and Axelos to jab his own weapon at the Yorkshireman. ‘If you threaten her again, I will kill you!’
‘It’s okay, Rutger,’ said Anastasia. ‘Nina, I don’t want to do anything drastic. But we are not leaving Greece without the Cru—’
A gunshot – and De Klerx’s man at the lounge’s aft doorway fell, blood spouting from a ragged bullet hole in his back. Anastasia flinched away in shock, while Petra screamed.
Two of the yacht’s crew rushed down the passageway and darted into the cover of rooms to each side, the cook covering them with her smoking gun from the stairs to the lower deck. ‘Let Mr Trakas go!’ she shouted.
The Dutchman flattened himself against the bulkhead beside the entrance. The other man who had followed Anastasia into the lounge brought up his gun to shoot down the passage—
The tycoon’s hand whipped under the table and snatched out a revolver that had been taped beneath it. He fired without hesitation at the hijacker, the round ripping into the side of his chest. The man flopped to the carpet like a rubber bag full of water. Lonmore yelped in horror.
De Klerx spun to face the unexpected danger – and Axelos burst into action, hurling himself bodily at the Dutchman. His gun arm was knocked away from its new target as he fired, the bullet blowing out one of the large windows. A great waterfall of shattered safety glass fell to the floor behind Nina and Eddie.
Axelos slammed De Klerx against the bulkhead. But even with the wind knocked from him, the brown-haired man kept fighting, grappling with the bodyguard. Trakas
aimed his revolver at a new target: Anastasia. She stiffened as the gun swung at her. ‘Ana! Tell your man to stand down.’
‘Rutger, stop,’ Anastasia said with angry reluctance. De Klerx gave Trakas a rage-filled glare, then ceased fighting. Axelos shoved him face-first against the wall before stripping him of his other weapons and equipment.
‘This is not the first time I have been threatened on my own ship,’ said Trakas. ‘Now, Ana. Drop your gun.’ Her pistol clunked to the carpeted deck. ‘Good.’ He moved to her and kicked the fallen weapon clear, then shifted position to cover his guests. ‘Greece is a seafaring nation. We do not like pirates.’
‘Augustine, I swear I had nothing to do with this,’ said Lonmore, hands spread in entreaty as he stepped closer to his friend. ‘This wasn’t—’
He moved between Trakas and Eddie – and the Englishman responded instantly. ‘Nina!’ he yelled, grabbing the table and flipping it over. It hit Lonmore, sending him reeling into Trakas and Anastasia. Before either Greek could react, the couple had leapt through the broken window and run aft down the port-side walkway.
‘Where are we going?’ Nina shouted.
‘Off this fucking boat!’ Eddie looked towards the stern. The launch that had brought them aboard was still moored at the dock—
An armed crewman rounded the rear of the superstructure. The Englishman swerved, pulling his wife with him through a hatch. A narrow passageway lay before them, but he suspected it would lead back to the central corridor, and Trakas’s people. ‘Up here,’ he said instead, scaling a steep ladder to the deck above.
Nina followed him up into what turned out to be the bridge. It was unmanned, an autopilot apparently steering the yacht. ‘Ghost ship,’ she said.
‘Sounds like there’ll be more ghosts aboard soon,’ replied Eddie as gunfire erupted from the decks below. The crew were retaking the vessel. He looked around. The only other exit was a sliding door at the wheelhouse’s rear that led on to a long sun deck running the length of the superstructure, the mainmast rising from it like a gleaming redwood. ‘There’s a ladder at the far end – or worst comes to the worst, we can jump down.’ He threw open the door.